68 THE PRODUCT OF THOSE FACTORS. [BK. I.

Christianity, and he now set himself up as a rival to Christ, boldly denying both His Divine Sonship and His atoning death upon the cross.1 He thus assumed a directly antiChristian position, barring the way of his followers to the true and only Mediator between God and man. Thereby he inflicted upon them the greatest conceivable injury; and in doing so he, of course, cannot have acted under the influence and by the will of a holy God of love. This lamentable position of an open rival and virtual enemy, he occupied from the moment and by the very act of his starting a religion of his own in the face of Christianity, which was already asserting its claim to finality and to a destiny for all mankind.
There is, therefore, no alternative for any one who recognises in Jesus Christ the Divine Saviour of man and in Christianity the highest revelation of religious truth, but to look upon Mohammed as a false prophet, and upon Islam, despite its borrowed truths, as in its religious distinctness, a stupendous system of fatal delusions. As such, their origin surely cannot be derived from the realms of Light, but must be traced to the mysterious agency of the kingdom of Darkness.2

Only if people forget that God 'who spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son' (Hebrews i. I, 2) and if they define the prophet of the Bible in some such manner as to make him out to be 'a man so penetrated by the idea of God, His omnipotence, His glory, that he takes his own conceptions of God for thoughts of God Himself, communicated to him by revelation,' can they mistake the author of Islam for a true prophet, or affirm that 'quite undeniably there was something of prophetship in Mohammed'

1 Compare the Tract, 'The Death of Christ upon the Cross, a Fact, not a Fiction: Being a Word in defence of Christianity against Mohammedan attacks' (Church Missionary House, London, 1885).
2 Sir W. Muir, who expresses such exaggerated views of Mohammed's sincerity and piety at the beginning of his prophetic career, and even admits that the author of Islam might have been a true prophet of God, but for his secular aims and immoralities, cannot help gravely to discuss the question of a Satanic influence on Mohammed, though his manner of doing so is open to objections. See his Life of Mahomet, vol. ii. pp. 9o-96.
CH. I. SEC. V.] MOHAMMED'S 'SINCERITY.' 69

(see pp. 55 and 56 in Dr. Ludolf Krehl's Das Leben des Muhammed.)1

Much stress is often laid on 'the sincerity of Mohammed's convictions.' But in the instructive chapter, I Kings xx., four hundred prophets are mentioned as prophesying, and one of them appears so sincerely persuaded about the truth of his prophecy that he made him horns of iron to symbolise the manner of its fulfilment; and he smote the true prophet Micaiah on the cheek, saying 'Which way went the Spirit of the Lord from me, to speak unto thee?' Yet all these four hundred were not prophets of God, making known His will, but prophets of falsehood, uttering the inspirations of 'a lying spirit.' Earnestness and sincerity in promoting a cause are not in themselves proofs of its goodness. There are false prophets as well as true prophets. Between them there may often be a close similarity in appearance; but in reality they differ as widely as darkness differs from light. Instead of being dazzled by the zealous earnestness of Mohammed and by the Divine truths incorporated in Islam, it rather behoves us soberly to admit that error becomes all the more dangerous a masterpiece of Satan the better it succeeds in assuming the semblance of Truth or mixes itself up with it; and the more its advocates uphold it with an air of sincerity and earnestness.

1 Dr. Krehl, in making these hyper-liberal concessions to Mohammed's claims, feels constrained, on page 343 of his work — where he admits that the prophet 'often pretended to speak under the influence of Divine inspiration, whilst he was consciously only trying to palliate selfish dispositions' - thus to confess the dilemma into which his theory has brought him: 'In such cases one often really does not know where the God - inspired prophet ceases and the egotistical man begins who is only thinking of things earthly, and is enclosed within the hazy atmosphere of earth.' This perplexity of the amiable biographer is the natural outcome of his false position, which prevents him from seeing that any man who diametrically opposes Jesus Christ and seeks to supplant Him, can only be a 'false prophet,' whatever his zeal and good intentions may otherwise be. The true Prophets are described by the Bible as 'holy men of God, speaking as they are moved by the Holy Ghost' (2 Pet. i. 21.) They therefore did not confound their own personal thoughts with the Divine inspirations, but clearly distinguished between their own ideas and the message which they were commissioned to deliver (comp. I Cor. vii. 25 to 40.) On the other hand, it is mentioned as characteristics of the false Prophets that they 'prophesy out of their own hearts' and 'follow their own spirit' (Ezek. xiii. 2, 3), and that they 'speak lying words in God's name which he has not commanded them' (Jer. xxix. 23).